Press release (in Finnish)
Exhibition Review in Lapin Kansa (in Finnish)

Jane Hughes 
We Gulp Dark Moons

6.04 – 30.4.2024
Opening reception Friday 5th of April, 6 – 8 pm

Galleria Napa
Kairatie 3, 96100 Rovaniemi
Opening hours: Tue-Thu 12 – 6, Fri 11 – 5, Sa 12 – 4

Galleria Napa presents the first exhibition of the Irish artist Jane Hughes in Lapland. The title, We Gulp Dark Moons, underpins the mysterious mood that circulates the works, an excerpt from the poem Hagfish (2013) by the Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa. The exhibition consists of a kaleidoscopic mix of large and small paintings of otherworldly landscapes, figurative charcoal drawings referencing archival images and fossil-inspired sculptural beings.

The paintings move towards semi-abstraction, with recurring motifs emerging across the canvas, travelling from one work to another like earth traces of ancient peoples.

The semi-arch motif is partly inspired by fossils encountered in the West of Ireland in the Carboniferous Limestones dating back to ~ 350 million years ago, transported to our present day, echoing cult-like figures from another realm. The painted surface is dense with multiple layers, stains, erasures and scratches, reflecting the mutations of time embedded in colour worlds of playful pastels and sombre midnight blues.

Hughes is fascinated by sacred places such as the holy wells and pilgrimage peaks in Ireland, the surreal moon-like landscapes of Iceland and enchanted Finnish forests. Her artwork is informed by her travels and residencies, including Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station, Reykjavík and Aran Islands, where observations of geological landscapes combine with lived experience of displacement and fractured cultural identity. The works form a fusion of geographical fantasies, and landscapes as repositories of memory, nostalgia, melancholy, and mourning in a time of climate anxiety and pervasive digital surveillance.